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by quotemstr 250 days ago
Because people make poor choices and it's usually their own fault.

We used have words like "vice" and "sin" to describe these poor choices, but thanks to post-60s radical individualism, the only vocabulary for describing maladaptive behavior that remains of the language of medicine. Therefore, everything bad someone does is a "disease" for which he needs "therapy" or "treatment". We've utterly lost the capacity for describing deficiencies of the conscience.
2 comments
Pulcinella 250 days ago
Why would many, many, many people choose to piss and shit themselves in public instead of stopping for a few minutes to use the restroom? Why would someone choose the push a button every 5 seconds to the point where it ruins their life?

Put it another way: why would gambling companies continue to develop gambling machines? Why not stop with the mechanical, one-armed-bandit of the early 1900s if what they do has no effect on people?

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quotemstr 250 days ago
Perhaps by the time someone's at the shitting at the seat phase of a gambling habit the neurological feedbacks arising from the intermittent reward schedule have become too strong for him to resist on his own.

But who made him start gambling in the first place? It's not like people who start gambling don't know how it ends. The most addictive slot machine in the world can't compel someone to sit at it for the first time. People KNOW these machines are addictive and choose to use them anyway.

It used to be cultural common knowledge that the wages of sin is death.

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Pulcinella 249 days ago
Perhaps by the time someone's at the shitting at the seat phase of a gambling habit the neurological feedbacks arising from the intermittent reward schedule have become too strong for him to resist on his own.

Bingo. The machines don't play themselves, of course. But at the same time, the manufacturers and casinos know exactly what they are doing. I would say:

We've utterly lost the capacity for describing deficiencies of the conscience.

applies to those the manufacturers and casinos as well.

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vintermann 249 days ago
Psychology and medicine have a bad habit of describing something, giving it a name, and then pretend it's also an explanation of the something. "Addiction" is one such thing. It's both a description of behavior and a (circular, deficient) explanation of behavior.

But then again, so is "vice" and "sin". You're not helping.

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